{"id":60796,"date":"2025-06-13T17:01:55","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T21:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=60796"},"modified":"2025-06-13T17:02:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T21:02:32","slug":"is-god-dead-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2025\/06\/is-god-dead-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Is God Dead?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

More of Beauty<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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            Beauty. Such an interesting topic. It is a topic everyone has an opinion about, and all<\/em> opinions are that we want more beauty in our lives. As we said last week, beauty is food for the soul. In fact, true beauty is said to be so personal and so transcendent that talking or writing about it seems to do them a great injustice and tarnishes their radiant glow. Perhaps it is because, as John-Mark Miravalle explains, beauty affirms balance, order, and a longing for the transcendent. Thomas Aquinas was keen on this. He once wrote, \u201cNature is nothing other than a certain kind of art, namely God\u2019s art.\u201d This is why there is often a haunting loneliness when experiencing true beauty; our soul longs for the transcendent Artist of all the beauty we see. Human beings have a personal moral obligation toward beauty\u2019s creation and preservation because of linking beauty with the transcendent. We know this because nothing evil can be beautiful. Think about it. Can a beautiful <\/em>evil be conceived? Nor does evil bring serenity, peace, or anything humans long for. And if it did, it would immediately cease to be beautiful because it was ugly from the start. That is why beauty is a common ground<\/em> between believers and skeptical unbelievers like Michael. Michael appreciates and loves beauty just as much as the ardent Christian. Miravalle explains that \u201cwe believe in objective standards of goodness and morality. In other words, beauty isn\u2019t just a preference.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            At any rate, humans have a mutual obligation to pursue beauty. John-Mark Miravalle writes that when people seek truth and goodness (or beauty), they will conform to goodness by becoming morally upright. \u201cThere is, in other words, a continuity between the things pursued and the pursuer\u2019s own attributes.\u201d That is why the apostle Paul once said, \u201cWhatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things\u201d (Phil 4:8). Why? Because beauty draws us outside of ourselves and to a higher reality; that spiritual reality, we have said, is<\/em> the Creator: the Designer of the cosmos, the Designer of the \u201cirreducible complexity\u201d found in human beings. A complexity not unlike man\u2019s body\/soul duality\u2014that immaterial soul that needs to be fed\u2014that soul that hungers for something higher and beyond itself\u2014that soul that yearns for its Creator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            A few weeks ago, we looked at the beauty beheld in the Golden Ratio, and last week, we looked at the beauty found in music that follows the Golden Ratio. But it is the beauty of nature that surpasses all else. Indeed, St. Augustine of Hippo once wrote of the orderliness of nature: \u201cFrom this stage, reason advanced to the province of the eyes. And scanning the earth and heavens, it realized that nothing pleased it but beauty; and in beauty, design; and in design, dimensions; and in dimensions, number.\u201d After all, God used the wonder and beauty of nature to offer a defense of Himself against Job (Job 38-42). And it is from the beauty of nature that Paul claims we cannot deny that there is a Creator of all that we see (Rom 1:19ff).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Once again, evolutionary explanations fail to offer the best possible solution as to why humans have such a keen sense and a longing for beauty. Philosopher Mahan Matthen summarizes the evolutionists\u2019 dilemma: \u201cWhy is it valuable to be absorbed in contemplation, with all the attendant dangers of reduced vigilance? Wasting time and energy puts organisms at an evolutionary disadvantage.\u201d Christian scientist Fazale Rana states, \u201cAn obsession with aesthetics could be properly seen as maladaptive.\u201d It is not a good thing to daydream about the beauty of a rose or the beauty of a sunrise, all the while living in the woods with a saber-toothed tiger! But if the eyes of the soul are open, then the often-breath-taking beauty beheld in nature can bear God\u2019s fingerprints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point is this: after a thorough investigation, it seems to me that human beings alone possess both a body and a soul. And the soul of man longs for something that transcends this world. The Creator often feeds the soul of His creatures through divine serenity found in beauty. Philosopher Richard Swinburne notes, \u201cIf God creates a universe, as a good workman, he will create a beautiful universe. On the other hand, if the universe came into existence without being created by God, there is no reason to suppose that it would be a beautiful universe. It seems to me that divine agency is the best explanation for the beauty in the world around us. And it is further evidence of the human soul. Join us next week as we look once again at the human drive and capacity to feed the soul \u201creal food\u201d and glimpse the Creator\u2019s fingerprints. Until then, what will you say: Is God Dead?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gloria in excelsis Deo!<\/em>Ty B. Kerley,<\/strong>DMin.<\/strong>, is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife, Vicki, are members of the Waurika church of Christ and live in Ardmore, OK.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More of Beauty             Beauty. Such an interesting topic. It is a topic everyone has an opinion about, and all opinions are that we want more beauty in our lives. As… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":60372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2946],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60797,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60796\/revisions\/60797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}